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The more widespread use of body cameras will make it easier for the American public to better understand how police officers do their jobs and under what circumstances they feel that it is necessary to resort to deadly force.

Americans are finally enjoying an improving economy after years of recession and slow growth. The unemployment rate is dropping, the economy is expanding, and public confidence is rising. Surely our economic crisis is behind us. Or is it? In Going for Broke: Deficits, Debt, and the Entitlement Crisis, Cato scholar Michael D. Tanner examines the growing national debt and its dire implications for our future and explains why a looming financial meltdown may be far worse than anyone expects.

The Cato Institute has released its 2014 Annual Report, which documents a dynamic year of growth and productivity. “Libertarianism is not just a framework for utopia,” Cato’s David Boaz writes in his book, The Libertarian Mind. “It is the indispensable framework for the future.” And as the new report demonstrates, the Cato Institute, thanks largely to the generosity of our Sponsors, is leading the charge to apply this framework across the policy spectrum.

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U.S. Treasury Secretary Challenges Protectionists

Hearing Washington officials speak sense on international trade has become a rare event these days. So a speech today by U.S. Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson was like a fresh spring breeze after a long dreary winter.

Speaking to the Economic Club of Washington, Secretary Paulson delivered an important address on the huge benefits Americans realize every day from our growing trade and investment ties with the rest of the world.

The secretary touted America’s booming exports, including a 32 percent jump in exports to China in 2006. More importantly, he focused on the benefits of imports, the real payoff from trade:

Trade fosters the environment of competition, innovation, research, and investment that leads to better goods and services at lower prices. Some people speak about trade as if its benefits come only from exports, ignoring the positive contributions of imports. Data show that internationally trade products tend to experience lower inflation rates—even real price declines—while non-traded goods tend to rise in price. Trade thus helps Americans provide for their families. When special interests seek protection in the name of low-wage workers, we should acknowledge that limitations on imports do not benefit the vast majority of Americas. They deny people the freedom to choose from a broader array of goods and services, and impose a cruel tax on people who rely on low prices to stretch their family budgets. The cost of protectionism falls most heavily on those who are least able to afford it—the poor and the elderly.

The speech is packed with other sound thinking and useful numbers on the hot trade topics of the day, including China, the trade deficit, manufacturing, foreign investment and adjustment-assistance programs.

Secretary Paulson’s speech is an antidote to the economic snake oil that is being hawked on what seems to be every street corner of Washington these days.